July 28, 2016
What Can’t Be Cast Off: An Interview with Fiction Writer Rachel Hall
In many of my columns for the Kenyon Review blog, I’ve been exploring what we hold onto and what holds onto us. What do we try to discard? What haunts […]
July 20, 2016
Speak Us Into Life: A Tribute to Elie Wiesel
Must we be reminded that, in the end, all works of literature, even despairing ones, constitute an appeal to life? —Elie Wiesel I didn’t want this tribute to […]
December 11, 2014
Martyr Stories, Past and Present
Some of the most popular stories in medieval Europe were tales of saints and martyrs. Many of the hagiographies were essentially martyr stories as well, seeing as most early Christians were […]
December 20, 2012
To Know or not to Know: On Eating Meat
It seems to me the question of “not knowing” or “knowing” about a society-wide horror is not simple binary. It is possible to know enough to want not to […]
March 7, 2012
Notes on Capital-T Tragedy
1. Why it started with the Greeks and showed up again with the Elizabethans. What makes a tragedy tragic—as opposed to a story with a sad ending—is that the sufferer […]